Aubrey the answer?

Norfolk’s Michael Aubrey went 2-for-4 with a homer last night and is a strong candidate to be the extra position player the O’s recall for Interleague Play. He was slowed this spring with a non-baseball related issue and then a groin injury but appears to be heating up down in Triple-A. In his last 10 games, Aubrey is batting .433 with two homers and five RBIs, posting a .733 slugging percentage.

Is he the answer to replace slumping Garrett Atkins? I’m not sure Aubrey over Atkins can really be deemed an impact move. But at this point of the season, as Andy MacPhail said has said, the organization’s only option is internally. Aubrey does play first base and would allow the team some flexibility off the bench.

Atkins over Aubrey? I’m not sure what to think. What do you guys think?

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6 Comments

Britt:

Aubrey is a former first-round pick of the Cleveland Indians who showed at the end of last season that he can hit for average and flash the leather at 1B. He can’t do much worse than the 1B production the team has seen thus far in the season. Zero HRs is not hard to beat, even from a guy who doesn’t hit a lot of them. He could hit one by accident and be better than Garrett Atkins. Look, the MacPhail gamble (low rick/high reward) on Atkins flopped; let’s live with it an move on. Also, Snyder isn’t even close to ready yet. He may end up in Norkolk again in 2011, unless he starts hitting.

Aubrey’s Triple-A OPS over 3 seasons is about .750. Not a great predictor of MLB success, his nice 90 AB last year nothwithstanding. However, the Orioles have shown this year that they’re not afraid to throw some spaghetti on the wall to see if it will stick (Hughes did not, Patterson has), and Atkins has been a total zero, so giving Aubrey 100 AB couldn’t really hurt.

Right now I put my 8 year old son over Atkins. I was listening to Palmer question his batting stance which leaves him totally unprotected to the outside pitch ´´he has no authority there´´, specially the slider that starts inside and ends up striking him out. I noticed that his head is completely turned to the pitcher, suggesting he has limited vision in his left eye, which is not too uncommon when a player goes cold turkey on steroids (look ar Haffner of Cleveland or Ortiz in Boston, Texeira? ). Galarraga of Venezuela had to learn to hit all over again after two dreadful seasons. Any eye doctors handy??

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